Morning Bid: Calmer, but for how long?

[July 29, 2024]  A look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets by Alun John, EMEA breaking news correspondent, finance and markets

Things are feeling calmer on Monday morning, though we will see how long that lasts as it's going to be an action-packed week.

Shares in Europe and Asia are trading higher and Nasdaq futures were up 0.3% at the time of writing (0900 GMT, 0500 ET)- a change of tone after a stumble by megacap tech stocks saw the tech-heavy benchmark shed 5.6% in the past two weeks.

This week will go a long way towards deciding whether that's it for the sell-off, and the rotation into small cap stocks, or whether it is the start of something big.

Geopolitics aren't having much of an effect on markets, at least so far, and concerns that Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah could be sucked into a full-scale war have done little to move oil prices, let alone broader markets.

Monday's main potentially market-moving event is the U.S. Treasury's quarterly refunding announcement.
 

It's one of those that can sometimes pass without notice. But investors were surprised by the larger auction sizes in the equivalent announcement a year ago, which sent long-dated Treasury yields higher due to fears about how the additional supply would be absorbed.

We might get through this one unscathed, as the Treasury indicated in May it will keep most auction sizes steady. But it does mean a surprise could generate a larger reaction, and certainly investors remain worried about the U.S. fiscal trajectory.

We'll rattle through the rest of the week's big events quickly so we aren't here all day, as there are a lot of them.

Earnings are due from Microsoft on Tuesday, Meta on Wednesday and Apple and Amazon on Thursday, which will be interesting after Tesla, and to a lesser extent Alphabet, which disappointed last week.

In central banks, the Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday - no change is expected, but it'll be interesting to see whether they do anything to disrupt market bets on a September rate cut - as well as the Bank of Japan, while the Bank of England will convene on Thursday.

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 24, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

Market pricing sees a first BoE cut of the cycle as a coin toss, and a second small rate hike as more likely than not from outlier Bank of Japan.

On top of that, there are all the back-and-forths in opinion polls ahead of November's U.S. presidential election to follow. As if that's not enough, we've got jobs data scattered through the week, building up to Friday's non-farm payrolls data. Traders always say this is important, but this one really is.

Signs, though not definitive ones, that the labor market is slowing mean that Friday's data could even tell us more about the likely rate trajectory for the Fed than the central bank's Wednesday meeting.

Markets are currently pricing around 70 basis points of Fed cuts this year. It would be at least a bit satisfying for some of the Fed's policymakers if the three 25 bp moves this implies come to pass, as that's what Fed rate setters said they expected to do back in December 2023.

Since then, of course, there have been moments when markets have swung between pricing nearly seven rate cuts this year to pricing almost zero.

Key developments that should provide more direction to U.S. markets later on Monday:

* Earnings: McDonalds, Chesapeake Energy

* U.S. Treasury announces quarterly borrowing estimates

* Dallas Fed manufacturing activity

(By Alun John; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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